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majestic

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Everything posted by majestic

  1. majestic
    Yeah, move on. Erm... luckily Tamako Market isn't very long. I've installed a SRS tool to learn kanji with. It features the "education" (i.e. everything Japanese students are supposed to be able to read at the end of high school) kanji, their meanings, readings and compound uses, as well as a basic vocabulary that you should know before starting. Keep in mind that these are the kanji necessary to achieve literacy, i.e. to be able to fluently read a book that does not contain obscure or outdated characters. Spoilered for formatting reasons mostly. As you can see, it'll be a while yet... It was a less than ideal evening, for a lot of reasons, but hey, that's a story for another time, because otherwise this post becomes a fourty page story on how much of a failure that was. Still, the film was something she wanted to watch, and I just went along with it, but ultimately was supposed to say no to. How was I supposed to know that? I have no idea. I probably missed some very obvious clue, but being who I am, well...
  2. majestic
    Tamako Market, episode 8. Choi calls Dera a chicken after he doesn't fit into a bird house Kanna built for him, and has to go on a diet. Whenever something happens that Dera doesn't like, either Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor or Beethoven's 5th symphony starts playing. Can't say this isn't trying its damndest to be appealing. Many of the jokes in this episode made me have an inward laugh. I could appreciate the jokes, but they didn't land for me. Par for the course, I'm beginning to wonder what the difference to K-On! is, because K-On!'s jokes were... funnier? Maybe better timed. No idea, really. Haven't watched Okko's Inn, but the experience sounds familiar. I'm not sure something like this happened before***. Sure, there's plenty of films** (or series) I didn't really enjoy but not hate, but those I can always find flaws with, but this doesn't... really have flaws, outside of being too meandering, perhaps. Only four episodes left, and there wasn't even the barest hint of trying to resolve any of the ongoing minor storylines, i.e. Dera's quest for the princess or Tamako and Mochizo's, uhm, would be romance*. The writing is decent, sometimes good and very occassionally brilliant, there's a lot of effort that went into making this and it doesn't look like dreck (okay, that's debateable, but it looks a bit similar to K-On! which I've grown to, well, maybe not like, but not to... mind, I guess). The voice acting work is good, some of it is great. Kanna and Shiori could be better, but they fit their character, so that's not exactly a problem I can find outside of personal preferences. It just doesn't appeal to me that much. I want it to, but it doesn't. In this episode Tamako and her friends go and buy Choi new clothes because it's autumn and getting colder. That should work for the character stuff, but it doesn't. Not really. edit: The footnotes are out of order because I edited them in out of order and didn't want to shuffle them around, plus there's a certain timeline to follow. *Given that the follow-up film is called Tamako Market: Love Story, I'm not expecting that to be resolved in the series though, to be honest. **I suspect that there are films like that and I just haven't watched them. Like Pretty Woman, for instance. Never saw it, and I most likely never will. If I did, it would probably be similar, given its apparent quality but total lack of appeal for me. ***I just realized that it did. I watched The Devil Wears Prada (at the theater, no less, for reasons I don't want to disclose**** ), and the experience was similar, I guess. I didn't hate it, it was actually a pretty well made film with decent performances all around, but just not my thing. ****
  3. majestic
    Nitpicker in me says Electra complex, but yes, that's not really DEATH PHANTOM's fault.
  4. majestic
    I'm not sure forced father/daughter incest (editor's note: forced by the daughter, dear reader, in case you don't know what this is about) is any better than a pedophile alicorn bringing little children to his crystal lake where they can only visit when they don't tell their parents about him and the three rapists he saved can watch. Wait, now that I have typed this out, nope, not even Manga!Black Lady is as bad as Pegasus.
  5. majestic
    WISEMAN, also known as DEATH PHANTOM, gives out free boobjobs to anime girls, whether they want them or not. Hello, don't mind me, there's nothing else going on. Don't believe the people who tell lies about me.
  6. majestic
    Yeah, now I'm confused too. I could swear that wasn't there before. Maybe I just read over it. Haven't slept much recently.
  7. majestic
    You forgot Turkish Star Wars.
  8. majestic
    Tamako Market, episode seven. The girl who came looking for Dera last episode is called Choi, and she uses Dera to tell fortunes that are frighteningly accurate. She's also pretty angry that Dera has grown too fat to fly and finds out that his communication, uhm, equipment is damaged. Dera meanwhile tells her a wild story about being forced to stay and consume mochi, so Choi ends up highly suspicious of everyone, and everyone is just nice to her. ... I kinda get tired of repeating myself, but that's another episode that is... fine. it had some geniunely nice moments, but... *sigh* Yeah, this just doesn't really work out. It's not bad, it's pretty nice most of the time, there's nothing offensive, Dera is funny, the characters are all nice, but it's just not for me, I guess. Good thing it's short.
  9. majestic
    How many One Piece episodes are there by now? 2000? 5000?
  10. majestic
    She indecently exposed her shoulder. I mean... yeah, that's all there was. That's one part lack of grammar knowledge - there's a whole lot to unpack, and I checked, it's been only 50 days (and more than a few where I just looked at the vocabulary list), so eh... things take a bit. The other part is lack of practice, so that's not bad indeed. Agglutination is very prominent in Japanese, and it makes learning words a bit of a hassle. Conjugation rules, as a whole, are really simple (at least when compared to German, compared to English they're probably hell), but that barely makes any difference if it takes a while for it to sink in that nuidara is a conjugated variant of nugu. It was hilarious when Ran was convinced by the end and Myao just laughed at her for a change. Pretty good episode, all in all. Probably the best so far. 03:30 in the morning, and work today. Woops. Good night.
  11. majestic
    I think it refers to the moment where Myao, uhm, removes parts of her clothing for the painter. I should sleep, not try to translate things I don't entirely know how to apply yet, but hey... spoilered for brevity.
  12. majestic
    Uhm, is that really about fire fighters putting out burning demons like the trailer implies? Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, episode five. Well, what can I say. Myao is retarded. I say that every time, but it just is what it is. More than half the episode was her being retarded, and it's great. Bonus points for not having the old man die.
  13. majestic
    A long, long time ago I saved a thread from the old Interplay board, it was shortly before the invasion of Iraq (wow, almost 20 years now). I originally wanted to use the material to make fun of the posters and their predictions, but then two things happend. The forums died and the post war situation turned out worse than anyone of us opposed to the attack guessed. Man, reading through this, I'm beginning to realize why I saved the thread in the first place. Sorry for putting politics in here, but that's the only one I have left. Poster "The Raccoon", who was BruceVC's predecessor. Rock me some alaby and fry a criminal or two on faked charges. Gunnery Sergeant Gregster compares Saddam to good old Hitler. Dear God, some people's forum status: I, of course, also posted in this thread. In the interest of sparing myself the humiliation, I'm sure as hell not going to quote anything. That's... terrifying. 20-years-ago myself rivalled BruceVC's spelling and grammatical prowess. Ah, hell, why not. I always put manual line breaks in my post and refused to capitalize anything for... some reason that sure made sense to me back then. People calling each other butt-heads, morons, lady parts Trump likes to grab. Compared to that our current political thread is tame.
  14. majestic
    *snort* Thanks, now I spilled my bubbly water all over my table.
  15. majestic
    Tamako Market, Episode 6: Tamako builds a haunted house as an attraction for the shopping arcade. This one was kind of fun, Dera was funny as usual and someone at the end came looking for him. It was a good episode, and as usual, not really... dunno. Tamako Market keeps being fine, but nothing more. I'll try to get to watch some Carried by the Wind tomorrow. Wasn't really in the mood today, and I spent most of my time playing Grim Dawn of all things. Not sure why (probably because the current patch made a meme-build good enough to play it, and it's been a blast ).
  16. majestic
    I get beaten at arm wrestling by the women at work, so unless Unicorn of War also has the upper body strength of a girl that's a lost cause anyway. Tamako Market, Episode 5: The girls go to the pool. Tamako sees Mochizo and casually invites him along, and Midori is like "the hell is wrong with you, you can't invite boys when we'll be wearing our swimsuits" and I'm calling BS on that. I mean, sure, it's weird to invite a boy to a girl's day out in the first place, but that reasoning is pretty wild when you go to a public pool. Midori just doesn't want Mochizo to be around. I get that girl, really. Also shows just how much of an airhead Tamako can be. Midori ends up trying to teach Tamako to swim, and once again, all I can say is that I should like this more than I do. edit: She also stops Dera from delivering a "hey, I want to meet and tell you something" note from Mochizo to Tamako. Devious. Tsk. edit 2: Midori ends up talking to Mochizo and she's really, really jealous. Yikes. edit3: Midori asks Tamako what she thinks of Mochizo and she says he's a childhood friend. Happy with that Midori makes up with Mochizo. Girl, you definitely need to watch more romance films if you think that's fine. She's now trying to get Mochizo to talk to Tamako. Hm.
  17. majestic
    Sure, . Figures. Mhm. Don't I know what you mean, except not exactly with entertainment that I like. It's everything else that's a bother at times. Deadlines make things so much easier to achieve. Leave me something to do and tell me I can do it whenever I feel like, that's probably going to be never. Are you saying that you don't like the beautiful giraffe look? The biggest problem is, I think, going to be able to get through the Black Moon arc. That was the worst in Crystal. At least until... uhm. No, that's wrong. There is no worst in Crystal, every season including the movies are all equally the worst, as impossible as that is. Might just get the live action thing out of the way first. It's also taking up the most space on my hard disk, and my disk space is slowly running out. I really need an upgrade here. Meh. I haven't noticed anything yet, but we'll see. So far there was a whole bunch of guy underwear to be seen though. I've seen worse intros though. The chipmunk song from the second season of K-On! probably takes the cake. Finished watching Tamako Market, episode four. Tamako's sister Anko hides in a closet when a certain boy from her class hears her yell to sell special holiday mochi they made. Unlike with Shiori (who appears in this episode but acts normally) Anko is nine, so that's somewhat excusable. There's a running gag in the entire episode that Tamako is about as dense about her and other's feelings as Sakura in CCS is. I really wish that I would like these characters more than I do. Then I'd actually enjoy watching this, instead of just noting that it's not bad but just not clicking with me. Dera keeps being funny, but I doubt that'll work for 8 more episodes and a movie.
  18. majestic
    I certainly didn't expect them to be almost completely naked, on the other hand, I keep expecting Myao to be the victim of some fan service, what with her clothing and all, but she never is. Speaking of fanservice, there's that Nanoha movie to finish. And one more for the road. Ugh. I see, thought I'd ask because you seemed to plow through it at record speed. I should probably finish Sailor Moon at some point too. And watch that live action adaptation. That one is at least entertainingly terrible. Well, I don't know if it's terrible yet, but the production values and the actors sure are, and Mamoru has a mullet, so it's starting from a point of zero expectations. On the other hand it's going to have Dark!Mercury which sounds totally awesome (in a derpy way) and both manga fans and fans of the original anime agree that it's nice to watch, so that probably means... something. I'll probably end up hating it, but it means something. Yeah, I'll just switch to spelling Tamako in Hiragana (たまこ) so you won't be able to do that... as easily. The outro song is a bit like the entire anime. I think I like it more than I should, but I'm not sure I really like it. The intro song on the other hand is pretty much outside of my comfort zone and that won't change at all. Curious because the song isn't so much different from K-On!'s, at least structure wise. I don't really like the vocals or the brass instruments though. Anyway, speaking of animes that I like more than I should, for some reason Dera never fails to amuse me.
  19. majestic
    There's also the whole honor deal, ronin or not. She might not get involved in anyhting willingly, but she does see things through. Can't very well stuff yourself without being able to pay for it just because your retarded martial artist friend stole from a shrine. That was shown to be something so low that not even hardened criminals would consider doing so for a reason. The episode was good, in the end, I just thought I accidentially started the wrong anime when the two guys were dancing naked for Myao, but that's the show being a parody. Can't really call that fanservice with the two retarded wannabe bandits. I mostly avoided your posts about Carried by the Wind (great how I have a typo in the name, I... edited it, but it's in your quote there, forever mocking me) by far and large because I decided early on that I want to watch too. I never thought it would be possible, but the past few episodes clearly made Komi worse than Discovery ever was. Discovery is a hodgepodge of bad writing, terrible direction, bad characters and annoying acting, but it doesn't make me want to stab the characters, myself, my eyes or my ears all the time. I can see that being something like Sailor Moon - the manga being much less problematic than Sailor Moon Crystal. The anime is just an all-out assault on my senses. That reminds me, are you done reading Sailor V? I'll see soon how much of a regular Shiori becomes, but regardless, even without Shiori in it I'm not sure I could recommend it. I was watching the episode, and the realization that the writing in in this anime is good struck me a bit out of the blue because that's not something I thought about in between the way the scene composition and animation wrecks my brain* (not in a bad way though, but it's very distracting). I still don't entirely like the setup, I don't really care for Tamako or any of the other characters that much (which is the anime's biggest issue, because since this is apparently about nothing in the same way K-On! is about, well, nothing, the characters are the most important part), but I had to appreciate the simple elegance of the scene that neatly and without saying a word conveyed so much exposition and a joke by repetition. It also followed from some setup in the first two episodes where Tamako followed her after school routine. *The closing credits of each episode are a really nice example: Not really sure what to make of the song, but that animation is really... uncanny at times. I start spacing out hard watching it for some reason. It kinda gets in the way of watching with subtitles. Hmm. edit: Actually, even that still preview image is uncanny and making my head spin. Baffling.
  20. majestic
    Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, episode four. Uhm. What the hell is going on? Meow Myao steals from a temple, gets completely sh*tfaced, has two weirdo bandits who are about as retarded as her strip for her and ends up having to work off the bill. I mean, yeah, that's kinda funny to be honest, but... what... the hell is going on?
  21. majestic
    Yes, you're right, and you could also keep the territory occupied for decades, investing enough resources and personnel to properly secure everything and help the people. That could work, but there is no guarantee, but who has the patience (or the money) for that in this day and age. More like, you'll be getting another Iraq or Afghanistan. I guess Bush really believed that there's a little American in every Iraqi, just waiting to be released. The sad part is, it really could have gone better, but what was it that Sun Tzu once wrote, the victorious warrior wins first and then goes to war, while the defeated warrior goes to war and seeks to win. Sometimes that really holds true, huh?
  22. majestic
    Komi Can't Communicate, episode 12. Second season coming in April, apparently. Phew. That's one very necessary break.
  23. majestic
    What does that even mean? Looking back at our own history, we had five hundred years of hereditary monarchy that only ended after aristocratic rule was abolished by law - after said aristocracy caused what was later known as the great seminal catastrophe of the 20th century. The parties quickly created their own armed militias, and before long shots were fired and we were back to a dictatorship. Hello failed state. That was less than a century ago. France had a revolution and before long was ruled by an emperor again. If the people of Kazakhstan want to riot and overthrow their autocratic leadership, then let them. If they want to string up the leeches exploting them, then... give them rope, but otherwise, stay out of it. A society can't mature or establish a democratic culture (assuming that is even what they want) if it's not allowed to make mistakes along the way. Unlike with France a ways back or the more recent second world war, a failed democracy in Kazakhstan is unlikely to cover half the world in conflict, is it? Not surprised that Bruce is in favor of securing natural resources Kazakhstan by force, but you? Mr. Anarchist? Anyway, the point is pretty moot regardless. Russia is going to deal with the issue and that's that. The West will complain a bit, but secretly be all right with. The end. Obviously. You can't force cultural change from the outside. Well, no, that's wrong. You can, but that requires draconian measures and the active eradication of the established culture, and it takes a while (you could, for instance, invade Gaul, put two thirds of the male population to the sword and then gift women, children and their former belongings to your soldiers, and you'll have a very loyal province pretty soon ).
  24. majestic
    たまこまーけっと, episode 3. I thought Shiori was over the top, but otherwise this episode was good. Like, really good. I might end up liking this after all, but sadly I think it terminated itself as a recommendation for anyone else for the time being.
  25. majestic
    Yeah, no, that's just wrong. It's not hard to see why (sort of, still requires a bit of knowledge) but... yeah. It's not bad at all. There's nothing that offended me except that nosebleed*, and that was really short. Other than that it really looks a bit like K-On! after applying a LSD-induced color filter. It shows that it was made by the same team, the first two episodes didn't truly grab me. The thing is, K-On! for some reason did, even though the first few episodes were clearly worse than the first few episodes of Tamako Market, and that's... something I can't describe**. I'll know more pretty soon. Not many episodes. It really depends on how much of a drag the Romeo and Juliet subplot is. Sakura and Shaoran earned their silly 26 episode plus a movie romance. I'm not sure this anime can pull that off. If it only takes up a bit of screentime that's fine, if it's like the focus of half of the episodes, then thanks, but no thanks. That's true, but also the reason I "parked" Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles for the time being. It wasn't offensive, but it also didn't really make me interested in watching more. To be honest, that first episode of Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran did pretty much the same thing (it looks a bit better than Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles). Obviously that's not much of an issue once I begin, but yeah, others don't have that particular problem. *Of course there's the art. I mean, we can sit and talk about this for the next ten years, the problem is this was made post 2004 and looks appropriately modern, and no matter how much I complain about it, nothing's going to change. It also has the 16 year old girls looking semi-chibified, just like in K-On!, but the animation quality is fine, and the shot compositions aren't bad. That's pretty much all one can hope for in this day and age. **It's probably the character archetypes. I think I have a thing for Sailor Moonish characters, I mean... Yui is like the worst Usagi, after all. Tamako Market's main character isn't that interesting for me right now. Maybe that'll change.
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